A RURAL ODYSSEY II
Abilene
by
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“A RURAL ODYSSEY – Abilene – Digging Deeper” is the continuation of the story of Mick O’Brien, now a college graduate and back in his home town of Abilene, Kansas teaching at the new Junior College. He settles into daily life in Abilene and spends time with girlfriend Mariah Palafox a professor of English at the Juco. Family, friends, teaching, research and work on Mick’s “History of Abilene” take up most of his time. Mick and Mariah become close friends, then romantically involved. This leads to visits to her family and summer travel in Mexico and Spain, tips and hints aided by her relatives. Family ethnicity – Irish and Jewish – color the relationship. Life in Abilene gets dicey and dangerous with repercussions from previous problems with local criminals, then KKK activists and a return to violence and now larger threats to the citizens and town of Abilene.
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About the Book
“A RURAL ODYSSEY – Abilene – Digging Deeper” is the continuation of the story of Mick O’Brien, now a college graduate and back in his home town of Abilene, Kansas teaching at the new Junior College. He settles into daily life in Abilene and spends time with girlfriend Mariah Palafox a professor of English at the Juco. Family, friends, teaching, research and work on Mick’s “History of Abilene” take up most of his time. Mick and Mariah become close friends, then romantically involved. This leads to visits to her family and summer travel in Mexico and Spain, tips and hints aided by her relatives. Family ethnicity – Irish and Jewish – color the relationship. Life in Abilene gets dicey and dangerous with repercussions from previous problems with local criminals, then KKK activists and a return to violence and now larger threats to the citizens and town of Abilene.
About the Author
Mark J. Curran is a retired professor from Arizona State University where he worked from 1968 to 2011. He taught Spanish and Portuguese and their respective cultures. He has published many articles in academic reviews and now some sixteen books on his research specialty of Brazil’s “Literatura de Cordel” or “Folk-Popular Literature.” Other books done during retirement are of either an autobiographic nature - “The Farm” or “Coming of Age with the Jesuits” - or reflect classes taught at ASU. The latter are in the series “Stories I Told My Students:” books on Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Portugal and Spain. “A Professor Takes to the Sea I and II” is a chronicle of a retirement adventure with Lindblad Expeditions - National Geographic Explorer. “Letters from Brazil I, II and III” is an experiment in combining fact and fiction. Finally, “A Rural Odyssey – Abilene – Digging Deeper” is the most recent experiment with fiction.